Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme Overview
Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme is a broad, long-established website design aimed at churches and religious communities, with enough general-purpose parts to serve an organization that does more than gather for worship. It first appeared in 2014 and has been revised many times since, most recently in 2025.
AivahThemes sells it on ThemeForest. Pages are assembled with WPBakery Page Builder, which is bundled, but the design does not insist on it: the same elements are available through the theme’s own shortcode generator, so the builder can be switched off. Slider Revolution is included, and an options panel handles global choices.
Content is organized through post types for sermons, people, locations and galleries, which suits a community with several campuses, a roster of speakers and an archive of past messages. Ten custom widgets cover recent posts, contact details, social links, galleries and visitor-submitted testimonials.
Key Features of Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
- Post types for sermons, people, locations, galleries and slides
- WPBakery Page Builder included, with the option to disable it
- Built-in shortcode generator with more than 80 shortcodes
- Five header styles and ten footer column layouts
- Unlimited sidebars, assignable page by page
- Ten custom widgets, including visitor-submitted testimonials
- Slider Revolution plus flex, static and video sliders
- Unlimited colour skinning with 500+ Google web fonts
- Nine post formats and multi-threaded comments
- Child theme compatible, localization ready and multisite compatible
Who Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme Is Suitable For
Hopes works for Canadian faith communities that have accumulated a lot of material and need somewhere structured to put it: years of recorded messages, a directory of clergy and volunteers, and separate pages for each meeting place. The location post type is useful for a congregation that gathers in more than one building.
Its multi-purpose side also serves a religious school, retreat centre or community association that mixes service pages with event listings and a blog. Because it relies on a classic builder rather than a block-based approach, it suits organizations whose site is maintained by a partner who handles updates.
Important Notes About Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
This is an older product, so a staging test with your current WordPress and PHP versions is worth doing first. The feature list still advertises a business hours plugin, but the update log records that it was dropped because it was discontinued; Twitter widgets and support for the paid events add-on were also removed. Shop features appear only in the update log, so confirm them on the live demo.
Compliance rests with the organization. Donation receipts are official only from a CRA-registered charity. Recording services, or photographing the people present, requires consent. Children’s and youth activities call for parental consent and screened volunteers, and member records indicate religious affiliation and deserve careful handling.
Setup & Ongoing Management by AppiAppi
You select Hopes – Church & Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme and purchase the licence on ThemeForest, with AivahThemes providing the product and its support. AppiAppi installs it on a staging site to confirm it behaves on current versions, then applies your branding, photography and wording. We load your sermon archive, add profiles for clergy and volunteers, give each location its own page and map, publish the calendar, connect giving to your payment processor, create a volunteer sign-up form and hook up your newsletter.
Once the site is live, AppiAppi maintains it according to your subscription plan. We add recordings and announcements, keep WordPress, the theme and its plugins current, and reply to enquiries arriving through the site. Our AI-assisted SEO and content support helps people find your community.
Original design by AivahThemes. This is the starting point — we customize it with your logo, colours, content, services and SEO structure. View original theme source